User:PamD/rfc draft

Request for Comment on sorting of UK churches in categories in English Wikipedia
How should UK churches be sorted in categories in en.wiki? For background, including links to previous inconclusive discussions, please see the section above. Note that articles on UK churches have a wide variety of title formats. Consider St Chad's Church, Far Headingley, but also: (It is of course possible that some of these should have other article titles).
 * St Mark's Church, Woodhouse, Leeds
 * Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Killinghall
 * Parish church of St Giles, St Giles in the Wood
 * Bethel Chapel, Ynysybwl
 * Lenton Methodist Church
 * The Holy Sepulchre, Northampton
 * Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury
 * Mount St Mary's Church, Leeds
 * Leeds Minster
 * Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St Simon Stock.

The practice of expanding "St" or "St." to "Saint" is mandated by WP:SORTKEY and appears uncontroversial, so "Sort by article title" or similar, in this RfC, can be taken to mean "Sort by title with "St" expanded to "Saint" (and with a leading "The" removed in rare cases)".

The only existing guidance on sortkeys appears to be that at WP:SORTKEY, which includes the option that "Systematic sort keys are also used in other categories where the logical sort order is not alphabetical (for example, individual month articles in year categories such as Category:2004 use sort keys like "*2004-04" for April). Again, such systems must be used consistently within a category.". There is no one Wikiproject dedicated to UK churches, though they come within the interests of many Wikiprojects: Christianity and its denominational subprojects; Architecture; United Kingdom; and UK geography and its country, county or regional subprojects. Categories is also relevant. There seems no obvious place to record the consensus with which this RfC will close, but an archived RfC lodged in the wiki-memory of a variety of editors will be useful. If agreement can be reached, we can (a) move towards consistent sorting within categories and (b) avoid conflict between editors and time wasted in changing DEFAULTSORTs.

Discussion
Please express your preference within each of the three groups of options below:

1: How should UK church articles sort in "UK church" categories (where all or almost all of the entries are UK churches), eg Category:Grade II* listed churches in West Yorkshire?
 * 1A: By article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
 * 1B: By location, eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
 * 1C: By dedication, eg "Chad, Far Headingley"

2: How should UK church articles sort in other categories, eg Category:Headingley?
 * 2A: By article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
 * 2B: By location, eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
 * 2C: By dedication, eg "Chad, Far Headingley"

3: What should the DEFAULTSORT be for a UK church article
 * 3A: Article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
 * 3B: Location, then title eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
 * 3C: Dedication, then location eg "Chad, Far Headingley"